I had my parent’s car for the weekend so I picked up George and we went to the Deltaplex for the first ever, Grand Raggidy Roller Girls bout.

Actually, I stopped by the ATM, took out $20, accidentally left my card in the ATM, hurried over to George’s, waited for about 15 minutes for George to arrive, drove to Comstock park, paid $5 for parking, realized I left my card at the ATM, frantically drove back downtown, called and canceled my now lost ATM card, drove back to the Deltaplex for the first ever, Grand Raggidy Roller Girls bout.

The best part of this whole ordeal was not the skating, but the crazy diverse audience. People of all ages, races and walks of life where there to watch the derby. There were tons of people for what I thought would be a small scale hipster half-ass.

It turned out to be quite legit. People had signs and favorite skaters. Although I imagine most people joined me in ignorance of the game’s rules and shared my cursory interest in the derby itself, everyone seemed genuinely excited to see something like this in Grand Rapids.

I had a soft pretzel with cheese and the dj played the beer song by Mustard Plug, twice! George got some cotton candy and, like most of the other derby fans, relished the spectacle of the whole thing.